A lawsuit filed Wednesday accuses the Motion Picture Association of America of hiring a hacker to steal information from a company that the MPAA has accused of helping copyright violators.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California by Torrentspy.com parent Valence Media, doesn't identify the man the company says was approached by an MPAA executive. But the suit calls the man a former associate of one of the plaintiffs and alleges that he was asked to retrieve private information on Torrentspy.com, a search engine that directs people to download links.